Joined a Gym!

In my attempt not to be the person who quits there New Years Resolutions by March, Brian and I finally found a gym that gave us more or less what we wanted with a reasonable price tag. It isn't the cream of the crop and doesn't have everything we wanted, but its close, clean, reasonably priced and has the one piece of cardio equipment I like, the Precor AMT, its an elliptical that allows you to pick your own stride length and change it at will. So I don't have to go between an elliptical and a stair stepping machine, plus you can go backwards.

We joined a gym called Energy. Now all the people seem nice, most walk around with their ipods plugged in, but all smiled and/or said hello as they walked by. There was one creepy guy that made a point of walking behind me while I did my squats on the smith machine. He definitely thought he was something special, but an shorter, slightly chubby man with his weight belt cinched WAY too tight giving him a muffin top, not my idea of a fun person to interact with, the best part was, he wasn't doing any exercise that made him actually need the belt. I laughed to myself, finished my squats and moved on.

For my second day at the gym I managed to do over 30 minutes of cardio in the cardio theater, Meet the Parents was playing today, not a bad way to pass 30 minutes. I also did legs, thought I had gone pretty easy with weight and sets/reps, but while I do laundry and have to walk up stairs every 30 minutes, I can tell I got in a decent workout.

I am excited to really be starting in on my weight loss goal. I have been working towards some other improvements like increasing water intake, taking vitamins, eating smaller meals and better foods but until now I had done only minimal exercise, sporadic and definitely uninspired. Hopefully the precor machine, the classes they offer and just getting out of the house for an hour a day will inspire me to be bikini ready this summer!

How are your goals coming?

Produce

Yes this seems like quite an odd topic to post an entire blog on, but I find it quite relevant to my day. I went to 3 yes 3 grocery stores today and found that only 1 of them had any sort of quality produce selection. I find this completely and utterly ridiculous! My "normal" grocery store or at least the one that is closest is Harris Teeter, now due to my husband being a damn Wahoo (UVA grad for those that don't know), I have heard nothing but fantastic things about Harris Teeter for a long time and had high hopes of it being decent. However I find that most of their produce is ick for lack of a better way to put it. So I have been trying out Trader Joe's, which I have had some good luck with in the past and maybe in the spring/summer it will improve, but there was literally almost nothing worth purchasing their either. I was very disappointed and it even made me upset enough to get the one darn thing I went in there for. So I decided to try out a place I had driven by a few times and thought, well its worth a shot. its a small place called the Fresh Market, now they are apparently a chain, but I am not sure you would know this due to how wonderful it was. The entire store consisted of a total of 4 aisles and the rest was produce, baked goods, a huge wine and beer selection and a meat case that was HUGE. Everything for the most part was really really fresh and they were even taking off some of the stuff past its prime as I perused the all the wonderful fruits and veggies. I literally had to stop myself from buying way too much because it was all fresh. Now for those of you that have whole foods near by, its a lot like that but on a smaller scale and with less prepackaged items. I am super excited to go back and is worth the extra few mile drive. Its one of 2 in Charlotte and the other is only another mile or two drive from there.

Needless to say I just don't understand why all grocery stores don't stock quality produce and keep up with it. I suppose not all the stuff at harris teeter or trader joes was bad but to have to dig for it just isn't my style, its either there or its not. I had such high hopes for living in a bigger city, but at least I found one place to go!

Does anyone else have this problem or am I just really picky?